The Word’s Return: Scott Hahn Reflects on the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 55:10–11 Psalm 65:10–14 Romans 8:18–23 Matthew 13:1–23 Today’s readings, like last week’s, ask us to meditate on Israel’s response to God’s Word—and our own. Why do some hear the word of the kingdom, yet fail to accept it as a call to conversion and faith in Jesus? That question underlies today’s Gospel especially. Again, we see, as we did last week, that the kingdom’s mysteries are unfolded to those who open their hearts, making of them a rich soil in which the Word can grow and bear fruit. As we sing in today’s Psalm, in Jesus, God’s Word has visited our land to water the stony earth of our hearts with the living waters of the Spirit (see John 7:38; Revelation 22:1). The first fruit of the Word is the Spirit of love and adoption poured into our hearts in Baptism, making us children of God, as Paul reminds us in today’s Epistle (see Romans 5:5; 8:15-16). In this, we are made a “new creation” (see 2 Corinthians 5:17), the first fruits of a new heaven and a new earth (see 2 Peter 3:13). Since the first humans rejected God’s Word, creation has been enslaved to futility (see Genesis 3:17–19; 5:29). But God’s Word does not go forth only to return to Him void, as we hear in today’s First Reading. His Word awaits our response. We must show ourselves to be children of that Word. We must allow that Word to accomplish God’s will in our lives. As Jesus warns today, we must take care lest the devil steals it away or lest it be choked by worldly concerns. In the Eucharist, the Word gives Himself to us as bread to eat. He does so that we might be made fertile, yielding fruits of holiness. And we await the crowning of the year, the great harvest of the Lord’s Day (see Mark 4:29; 2 Peter 3:10; Revelation 1:10)—when His Word will have achieved the end for which it was sent.